The Book Thief

Markus Zusak
2005
978-0-375-84220-7

Liesel meminger is the daughter of a communist - a precarious thing to be in 1939 Germany.  She is given to a foster family in a new town, and she is taught to read from a gravedigger's manual - the first book she steals.

Words become her life, along with her new papa and Max, the Jewish fighter who is living in their basement.  Max, who depends on Liesel to be his eyes in a terrifying, hateful world.  There is also Rudy, the boy next door, her best friend and partner in crime, who can't understand why she steals books and not food.

Liesel is watched by the narrator, the busiest narrator during one of his busiest periods, and he shares her story in her own words.

Exquisitely crafted, this story lures you in to a life of everyday poverty, the spectre of war and of battles with bullies.  There is humour to be found here, and love.  And heartbreak.

This is a story that will stick with me for a long time to come.  It is haunting and chilling, intense in dark moments and endearing in lighter ones.

This is a story that I'm immensely grateful to have found.

Finished 16/11/13.
Read for Online Book Club December group read

The Crimson Petal & The White

Michael Faber
2002
ISBN 1 84195 324 5

This is a whopping book - 835 pages. It starts with the book addressing you and introducing you to the lowliest of 19th century London prostitues, and bouncing from her to someone else to someone else, before settling on the two people at the centre of the story - William Rackham, heir to the Rackham Perfume empire, and Sugar, famous prostitute.

Much of this book I found to be stilted, confined by the formal writing and etiquette of the period, and even setting this aside I found the characters hard to identify with, albeit interesting. Agnes is a walking tragedy, once you know the reason why, and Henry is a walking contradiction. His relationship with Mrs Fox irritates more than entertains, and the resolution there is ironic, if not satisfactory.

The story itself eclipses the various issues I had with the characters, and the climax builds up into a real page-turner, which made the ending all the more infuriating. In fact, the ending to this book sucked, considering how many pages there were to get through before it. That said, actually having finished it is an achievement in itself, and good enough for me.

Date Finished: 06/10/07
Year Total: 32

Blind Submission

Debra Ginsberg
2006
ISBN 978174175-150-5

This story opens with first-day-on-the-job jitters from Angel, starting a new career at a literary agency - reading the submitted manuscripts and deciding whether or not they are any good. Right from the beginning, there is a sense of almost hysterical urgency - the pace at the office is exhausting, even for the reader, and Angel throws herself into it to the detriment of the rest of her life, including writer/boyfriend Malcolm.

Between a crazy boss and an apparent stalker/submitter who is penning her life, Angel would start to wonder if she is going crazy herself - if she had time between phonecalls, memos and reading assignments.

The frenetic energy of the office hits you straight away, and the weird behaviour of Lucy and 'Kelly' do nothing to make Angel or the reader feel at home. Lucy is an engima, but by no means a quiet one - she is intimidating and scary, and Angel herself is stretched so thin that it's hard to tell if her uncharitable thoughts are a result of exhaustion or if she is actually quite nasty.

That aside, the mystery at the centre of the story - who is writing the manuscript that is following Angel's life - keeps you interested and reading. The ending arrives just as quickly as the rest of the book, and it confused me for several pages, but the tidying up at the end of the book makes up for it.

Enjoyable, but exhausting reading.

Date Finished: 14/09/07
Year Total: 29

The Dew Breaker

Edwidge Danticat
2004
ISBN 0349 11789 6

The blurb on the back of this book promises a lot, beginning with a man with a vicious, violent past, and the unfolding of his story. The first few pages begin with the man's daughter and her discover of his secret.

From there though, things get fragmented. The story becomes the stories of other random people, some of whom have no discernible connection to the family at the centre promised in the blurb. There is no reference to when in the story things are happening, and no reference to how anyone ties in.

Altogether, this is a confusing picture of a collection of lives, all somehow touched by the hardships they've encountered, but it's so distracting trying to place how everyone fits together that the mood the author is trying to
create gets lost.

Date finished: 20/08/07
Year Total: 25